Jeremy Doran:
Welcome back to NeuroConversant Leadership, where we talk about having conversations with a diverse audience, with people who are not just like you. I'm Jeremy Doran and I help great producers. Often engineers become great managers and hopefully great leaders. Ever wonder what it takes for a software developer to explain a solution to non-technical people in a way that makes sense to everyone. That doesn't sound easy, but it can be done. Today we have a very special guest, Greg Williams. He's got over 15 years of experience at Western Computer. He is the VP of strategy and a lot of what he does is translate between sales, engineering, operations, basically everything that this podcast is about. Greg, welcome.
Greg Williams:
Thank you. I'm happy to be here today.
Jeremy Doran:
I gave a very high-level view of what it is that you do, but if you can actually explain it for the audience, that'd be great.
Greg Williams:
Sure. Thanks, Jeremy. My role as vice president of strategy at Western has been to maintain a lot of our relationships with the different software applications that we sell and those companies, and also to provide a link between the sales teams and the operations teams at our company. I will often get involved in technical demonstrations and help translate those to the business decision makers and take away some of the jargon, take away some of the technical talk and just explain it in plainer terms. And then the flip side will also take something that a technical person, let's say a software developer, is trying to explain and explain that to our sales team in a way that then they can position it to the point where they're showing the business benefits and just not talking about technical jargon.
Jeremy Doran:
And is that something you've always been able to do, make that translation, or is that a learned skill?
Greg Williams:
It's a learned skill. I think the longer you are in business and the higher you climb and the corporate ladder and deal more with executives, you realize people speak a lot more plainly and in simple terms. So I've definitely learned that, but it takes many years of experience in technology to take a complex subject and explain it in a simple manner.
Jeremy Doran:
I'm interested in what phrase you like, hear people say, "Dumb it down," and most people don't like that phrase. I normally say, "Boil it down." Is there a phrase that you use for how you make something understandable to everyone?
Greg Williams:
Yeah. I don't like to say, "Dumb it down," although some people will ask that specifically. They will say, "Explain it to me like I'm five years old." But often what I will do is say, "Summarize it in a simple manner," is one of the phrases I like to use.
Jeremy Doran:
That's a good one. For people who you are helping do this translation for, are there things that you teach them so that you can obsolete yourself and they can communicate with everybody on their own?
Greg Williams:
Yes. That's been my focus. Instead of being the person in the room that has to do it is training the other folks on our team so they're able to do this. So I will sometimes listen to their calls and their demos that they've done and then review it with them and say, "Hey, here's how you could have explained this easy." One quick story I have is in our world we do ERP and business system software. The term WMS is broadly known as warehouse management systems in that world. But I was doing a demonstration eight or 10 years ago and I must have spent an hour talking about our WMS and what it can do, and the owner of the company finally stopped me and said, "Excuse me, but can you tell me what a WMS is?" So since then, I haven't used acronyms hardly ever, and that's something I try really hard not to do is never use an acronym.
Jeremy Doran:
If you are able to communicate without using them. Why do you think they are so prevalent?
Greg Williams:
I think some people are trying to just get a word out and speak quickly. And I think when you're talking peer-to-peer between developers, for example, it's easier for them to acronym something than write it all out and their time is money for them. So I understand that. But when you're talking to business decision makers, especially a broad cross-section, for example, we can be on the phone with a CFO, a CIO, and a COO, and they all care about different things. They have different acronyms in their day-to-day job. So if the CFO is talking about FP&A, I know that's financial planning and analysis, but the CIO might know that, and the COO probably doesn't. So I find that I'm often subtly repeating, but spelling it out. 'Cause I don't want to correct people, right?
Jeremy Doran:
Yep.
Greg Williams:
So I'll say, "Oh, I heard you just say that you wanted a financial planning and analysis application. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?" And that opens up the room for everybody without making someone feel dumb.
Jeremy Doran:
So you're the grease that makes everything run smoothly.
Greg Williams:
I try to be, yeah. Yeah, I try to be.
Jeremy Doran:
Going back to what you said about how you must have used the acronym. I don't remember how many times, let's say it was 15 and then someone finally asked the question. It's shocking to me how long it takes for people to ask questions when they don't understand something.
Greg Williams:
Yes. 'Cause People don't want to feel like they're uneducated or ignorant and the one in the room, they're afraid they're the only one in the room that doesn't understand it. And sometimes that may be true, but there's no problem with asking those questions. And a lot of times it's the executives that make confidence to ask those questions.
Jeremy Doran:
The episode that just dropped today while I'm interviewing you, which is going to be a few weeks ago, by the time people hear this, was all about that very topic of, "You have to be confident to ask questions. And when you're willing to ask questions, it shows your confidence, and it actually raises you up in other people's eyes because you're strong enough to ask that question."
Greg Williams:
Yeah. So I think there's probably still some in our world. I probably still use the acronym ERP, 'cause it's so well-known. But sometimes there's even people that don't know that term. So I'm always aware of the audience and if they're understanding everything and following.
Jeremy Doran:
You said that you are helping the people on your team so that you don't need to do it and they can communicate. What are some early skills or techniques that you can teach them to help that our audience could benefit from?
Greg Williams:
I think the first one is not to use too many acronyms. The second one is to stop and give them time to ask questions. A lot of technical presenters, especially ones that are more junior in their career, will nonstop talk and not come up for air. And then people forget their questions 'cause they don't get a chance to get a word in edgewise.
Jeremy Doran:
Why do you think that is? Why do you think they just go nonstop?
Greg Williams:
They're nervous. So when I started doing that in my career, I was nervous too. I had to get to the point where I would type out all my bullet points and speaking points and word and put big pauses, and I would put breathe pause on the paper, and then I would stop there and do that.
Jeremy Doran:
And how often do you just check in and ask the question, does this make sense to everyone?
Greg Williams:
Well, that's the point. So you pause and if you don't hear anything, then you check in and say, "Hey, are you all following me? Is there any questions about what we've covered so far?" Or that type of thing.
Jeremy Doran:
Got it. I like that.
Greg Williams:
And I think that's especially important nowadays when we're doing everything over Teams or Zoom. And a lot of people aren't on camera. And we get a lot of presentations where it's just completely quiet 'cause people are muted and you don't know if they're multitasking, you don't know if they're paying attention. So stopping and checking in is even more important now than it used to be.
Jeremy Doran:
It's so hard to give a presentation when you're getting exactly no feedback.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. Those are the hardest presentations there are, in my opinion.
Jeremy Doran:
Yeah. Sometimes I've heard people jokingly tell stories that they will set up stuffed animals behind the screen so that there's at least someone looking at them while they talk.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. So if I have a technical presenter that's newer to giving presentations and they're presenting to a customer, I will coach the salesperson beforehand to make sure you interact with them. I will say, "Don't you dare just leave them to the wolves and let them talk for 30 minutes." And then I'll tell the technical presenter, "Hey, you got to stop and give the salesperson time to talk here and there." So I'll coach them through that because it's much easier when you have that interaction going on.
Jeremy Doran:
So can you explain that again? Is that when there's a technical person and a salesperson both presenting to a prospective client?
Greg Williams:
Yes, exactly.
Jeremy Doran:
Got it.
Greg Williams:
So in a lot of cases, if salespeople are used to having a very experienced technical presenter, they'll just check out and let them do their thing, and then they will wrap up the call at the end of the call. But you have someone junior with less experience, then you have to check in with them throughout the call and give them that interaction. Otherwise, they're going to get way too nervous and they're not going to stop or they're going to go off track. Some people are naturals and do it right, but 80% of us need some practice before we get good at that. I'm definitely one of those. So coaching them beforehand that they need to interact during the call, both of them is important.
Jeremy Doran:
How often do those people already know each other?
Greg Williams:
In most cases, they will know each other, but there's a fair amount of cases where they haven't worked together before.
Jeremy Doran:
Doing a joint presentation or a joint sales call can be really hard. I've done it before, and even just the speed with which people react to things can cause problems if you don't really get on the same page. So that's not easy.
Greg Williams:
That's true. You're right. That's probably another good thing for in terms of communication that people early in their career can learn is not to react to things too quickly. I'm glad you brought that up. You don't have to have an answer right away. It's okay to say, "I have to think about that and get back to you." You don't want to say that for everything, but it's important not to react too quickly to information. And it's also important you don't have to solve the problem and solution it right there on the phone when they ask a question, it's okay to say, "Hey, we have several different ways to handle that. I'm sure we can address it. Let me get back to you on the best way to do it."
Jeremy Doran:
One issue that I had in my past is someone would say what they needed, and we had a solution for it, but I wouldn't talk about the solution. I would just keep asking more questions to find out more information because maybe there are 10 solutions we have. That would be a good one. And I was on a sales call with someone and as soon as they set a need, he would jump in with solution. I'm like, "You're not coming to any meetings with me anymore because you are totally derailing my process."
Greg Williams:
Yeah. I understand that. Yeah. That's interesting. But you also have to be careful with not giving customers too many solutions. So when we get into our implementations, we've gotten feedback from our customer base that they don't like it when a consultant tells them, "There's five different ways to do this process. You tell me which one you like more?" What they want to hear is, "There's five different ways. Here's the one I would recommend. Let's start with that one first."
Jeremy Doran:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. A great example is giving someone directions in a car. If you are going to be dropping someone off and you say, "Which way do I go?" And they say, "Oh, you can go either way left or right." That is incredibly frustrating. I'm like, "You tell me, and then I'll go from there."
Greg Williams:
Yeah. You tell me which one you like.
Jeremy Doran:
So yeah, it's saying, "We've got five solutions. Here's the one I think is the best." And then if there's something they don't like about it, you can start exploring the others.
Greg Williams:
Exactly. Yep. That's exactly what we've been coaching our team to do. Business consultants having lots of options and comparing the pros and cons of each different one, but end user customers do not enjoy that process. That's why they hired consultants is to do that for them.
Jeremy Doran:
There have been a number of great studies, and one of them is about ice cream flavors, and if you ask people, would they rather go to an ice cream shop that has three flavors or 35 flavors, they'll always choose the one with 35 flavors. But the people who went to the store with the only three flavors were always happier because they had three flavors, and the answer was obvious. When there's 35, they get so frustrated that they might have been able to pick something better, but didn't.
Greg Williams:
That's very interesting, Jeremy. Yeah, I can believe that. That makes a lot of sense.
Jeremy Doran:
There's a finite number of solutions that we all want to choose from.
Greg Williams:
Well, I think especially in today's society, people get decision fatigue. I've felt like that before where I make decisions all day at work and then at the end of the day, my wife is like, "What do you want for dinner?" I'm like, "Please just pick something for me. I don't want to think or make another decision."
Jeremy Doran:
I grew up, I'm the youngest to 10 kids. I rarely got to make decisions about anything.
Greg Williams:
Oh, yeah.
Jeremy Doran:
So I got in the habit of not caring. "So what do you want for dinner?" I don't care. "What do you want for this?" I don't care. But what I learned was that's really frustrating to other people to if I say, "I don't care because I learned that," because other people would say to me, "There'd be five of us trying to figure out where we went to dinner," and everyone's like, "I'm going to be happy anywhere." And so I started just throwing out the worst option I could think of to get people to respond to that. I'd say, "Great. Burger King." They're like, "For a dinner party? No, we should go to..." Great. There's the answer.
Greg Williams:
There's your options. Yeah. That's an interesting way to do it. Throw out an absurd option and then you'll get some suggestions.
Jeremy Doran:
Going back to the newer people being nervous and just running through the presentation without stopping, do you think it's 'cause they're afraid they'll forget something? Do you think it's afraid that someone will have time to ask a question they don't know the answer to or a third option that I haven't thought of?
Greg Williams:
I think there's a couple things. These really smart technical people, they think faster than they can talk. So they have so much information going on up in their head and they just want to get it all out and share it. So it's very important to coach them on how to build an outline for their presentation. And I encourage them to print it out and have it right there on paper at their desk in front of them so they're not alternating their eyes to another monitor. It's right there. So I encourage that. And I encourage them just to make it easy to read and easy to follow and to stop. I also encourage practice sessions, time permitting. They don't have to go through the whole presentation, but a quick dry run with someone else that's more experienced to say, "Hey, here's what I'm playing to show. Let's go from there." And also, just coaching on the overall presentation style to make it relatable. I like to say, "Show the cookies coming out of the oven, not necessarily how they were made."
Jeremy Doran:
That's a good one.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. Or people have the watch one as well. Tell me what time it is, don't tell me how to make a watch. We have that as well, and we just try to coach people on how to present at the right level of detail.
Jeremy Doran:
I recently did a talk and it's normally a 50-minute talk and I had 10 minutes to do it, and so you have to really prioritize. And you end up having to, "Kill your darlings," is the phrase I use. This point is a great point, but it's not one of the three most important points, so I'm going to have to take it out. And one thing I'll tell people is have them after. So have that as a slide for after you're already done, and then if that one thing happens to come up, you have it in your pocket and you can pull it back out, but it isn't one of the most important things. So really prioritizing and then just having the things that might be important, but aren't definitely important. Just having the background.
Greg Williams:
Yeah, that's great. That is great advice is to have backup content that you can use if needed, but don't lead with it. I was thinking about the same because the reason why these technical resources are valuable in a technical presentation. 'Cause you could train anyone to give the highlights of a software solution and explain what it does, but when they get the, "Gotcha," or deep question from the audience, that's where those technical people shine is answering those questions. So that's why you have to train them to be able to react to that in the right manner.
Jeremy Doran:
Yep. Without just spewing it all out upfront.
Greg Williams:
Exactly. Yeah. It's a really important skill and I think in our business, we call them pre-sales people, our pre-sales solution engineers, and they're one of the hardest skill sets to find as someone that has a technical background, but also has the right relatable personality and presentation skills.
Jeremy Doran:
Yeah, it's rare enough. I went to school for mechanical engineering, but I also studied psychology. And when I was getting interviews as I was about to graduate, I would always ask, "Why did you choose to interview me?" Because there's hundreds of us. And they say, "We want to see the guy who does both engineering and psychology because-
Greg Williams:
Oh, wow, okay.
Jeremy Doran:
... no one does that."
Greg Williams:
Exactly. That is a rare combination, Jeremy.
Jeremy Doran:
Yeah, it's fun. I'm a rare bird.
Greg Williams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Doran:
Looking through your profile, it also says you live in a multicultural household. Can you tell us more about that?
Greg Williams:
Oh, yeah. So married a woman from Central America. We have kids that are bilingual. She's spoken Spanish to them since they were born. I've spoken English to them since they were born. So they're both native speakers in both languages. And so I'm very, very proud of my kids for that. And we get to spend a lot of time down there in the winter and we go down and visit. And I like having an education in both cultures.
Jeremy Doran:
And how much Spanish do you speak?
Greg Williams:
Like an intermediate, so I can get through restaurants and airports and things like that, but I'm by no means fluent.
Jeremy Doran:
And how much is the difference in language affected the way you communicate between the two of you at home?
Greg Williams:
It hasn't really affected us because she started learning English when she was five, so she's very fluent and she worked in business for many years, so she has complete fluency in English. When my kids get to be teenagers and they talk back to me in Spanish and I can't understand, I'll get back to you.
Jeremy Doran:
From what I understand, when kids grow up learning both languages at once, it takes them a little bit longer before they start speaking either one, but then all of a sudden, it's like a tidal wave where they just know both.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. We didn't have the speaking so much with that, but we had that with reading and writing. My one son was a little behind in reading and writing. He was six till he really got to be reading and writing, and then as soon as he started reading and writing in English, he immediately started in Spanish as well. So it was pretty surprising. We thought, "Oh, now we're going to have to teach him Spanish." And he just reading and writing, and he just did both. So that was pretty exciting.
Jeremy Doran:
Going back to your work at Western Computer, are there any lessons you've learned that surprised you in terms of communicating?
Greg Williams:
Yeah. I'm going to go back to that technical presentation example again. When I first started doing demonstrations of the software, I watched someone else do one and said, "Oh, they're doing a horrible job. I can do much better." So I showed up and started immediately, went into detail on how you set up the software and what it can do for you. And I lost the audience. I completely fell on my face.
So that was a huge lesson right there, but I was always the type to just jump out and try something and not be afraid to fail and then improve from there. So that's probably one of the big lessons I learned. And then another one is to just make sure that you focus on the communication more than the technology. Because these people are looking at all these software applications and they're only catching, taking in a third of what most of the presenters are saying. So taking your time, reviewing things, repeating things, pausing for questions, makes all the difference in the world.
Jeremy Doran:
It really does. I work with engineers quite a bit, and I'll tell them, "It's not the best idea that's going to be chosen. It's the good enough idea that is presented in a way that people like."
Greg Williams:
Exactly. You're right. Yeah, you're right. Yep.
Jeremy Doran:
And some of them will say, "Well, I'm not a salesperson, so why does that matter?" I'm like, "Well, have you ever tried to convince your boss of something? That's sales." Everyone's in sales to some degree.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. Now, some of the interesting meetings I've had is when you're selling software to an engineering firm and the decision makers are all engineers, they will narrow focus on one topic in the meeting and get stuck on it and never leave it. And you're like, "That's 1% of the impact of this product on your business, and you're stuck on it." So that's always surprised me. 'Cause they do tend to, not all of them, but some of them tend to focus on the individual tree rather than forest.
Jeremy Doran:
Yep. And one thing I've tried, which sometimes work and sometimes doesn't, is I will let them dig into that a little bit and I'll say, "Here are the 10 things that we planned on covering today. If we keep going down this road, nine of them aren't going to get covered." Is this truly the most important thing and sometimes-
Greg Williams:
Yep. You have get out of that rabbit hole, don't you? That's a good way to do it. I like that. I'm going to use that, Jeremy. I learned something.
Jeremy Doran:
Go for it.
Greg Williams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Doran:
And yeah, sometimes they resist. They're like, "Well, they're all most important." "Well, they can't be." You got to pick. Are there any one lesson that someone on your team got that you didn't teach them so they all of a sudden came to a realization and they learned it somewhere else that was a big, "Aha," for you?
Greg Williams:
Yes, and I'm sure that happens all the time. I do encourage all of our team to especially listen to their meetings afterwards, has been a big game changer. Now that everything's recorded on teams, we're able to go back and get a summary of the conversation and watch it again. And I think that's been a big game changer for people learning how to change their behavior. When I started in this business, we didn't record our calls or we weren't able to watch them back, so I just had to go off of audience interactions. I wasn't able to go back and rewatch and then change my behavior.
Jeremy Doran:
That's a great lesson for people. And it's hard. It's so hard to go back and watch yourself and listen to yourself. No one likes their own voice.
Greg Williams:
No.
Jeremy Doran:
But you do it enough times and you get used to it, and then you can learn so much.
Greg Williams:
Yes, that's right. That's right.
Jeremy Doran:
Fantastic. All right, in the interest of time, we need to start wrapping up. So I'm going to ask you-
Greg Williams:
Okay, great.
Jeremy Doran:
... my three standard questions. Part one, question one is part A and B, a place that you have been and loved and a place you have not yet been, but want to go?
Greg Williams:
Okay. A place I really loved visiting was Tuscany in Italy. We went on a bicycle trip there and I loved it. I can't wait to go back again, but that was a really special place for me. Just every curve you went around was another postcard view.
Jeremy Doran:
There are a lot of cycling teams out there. I lived in Milan for a year, and every time you go out for a bike ride, you would see whole teams of people.
Greg Williams:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was fun. Yeah. It was really, really great and beautiful and fun. I'd like to go to Iceland. I'd like to visit Iceland. I haven't been there. It's pretty easy to get there from Detroit. It's a five-hour non-stop flight, so it's on my list of places to go for sure.
Jeremy Doran:
That's a good one. Yep. I hear that one more than once.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. Yep.
Jeremy Doran:
Can you also share with us who you think is a great communicator? And it can be a personal friend or a historical figure.
Greg Williams:
I like to watch Satya Nadella and the way he communicates as the CEO of Microsoft. I read his book. In his book, he shares that he had a special needs son that really changed his life and changed the way he approaches the world and communicates with people. So I learned a lot from reading his book and now when I watch his speeches, I really like the way that he connects with people.
Jeremy Doran:
Wonderful. And then thirdly, what is one piece of communication advice that we can all benefit from?
Greg Williams:
Slow down. That's probably my biggest thing, is slow down, take a breath, listen to the room. Take your time.
Jeremy Doran:
Wonderful. All right, everybody, slow down out there. For those of you listening to this at two times speed.
Greg Williams:
Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Jeremy. This was really fun. I enjoyed it.
Jeremy Doran:
Yeah. Before we wrap up, I just want to let people know where they can reach out to you or learn more about you.
Greg Williams:
Sure. You can connect with us at westerncomputer.com or you can search westerncomputer. on LinkedIn either way, and we would love to connect with you.
Jeremy Doran:
Perfect. Thank you so much. This has been a pleasure and a lot of learning.
Greg Williams:
All right. Thanks, Jeremy. Appreciate it.
Jeremy Doran:
Thank you.
Greg Williams:
Bye-bye.
Jeremy Doran:
Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed it, but I want to make it even better. So can you send me a note, send me an email jdoran@neuroconversantleadership.com, tell me what topics you'd like to hear, or what guests you'd like me to have on the show. The more feedback I get, the better I can make this. So send me a note at jdoran@neuroconversantleadership.com. Talk to you next week.
